


15 17 39

by Dionysisch



Series: Inevitable destruction [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Existentialism, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Sherlock is a flop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 07:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dionysisch/pseuds/Dionysisch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. (Jean-Paul Sartre)</p><p>Existentialism. Emptiness. Jim and his attempt at reaching the only person he relates to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	15 17 39

**_Ma pensée, c'est moi: voilà pourquoi je ne peux pas m'arrêter.  
_**_My thought is me: that's why I can't stop._ (Sartre)

Sometimes it would hit him so hard it became painful even to breathe. The meaninglessness of it all. It all dissolved into the same ephemeral prettiness of clouds, of smoke, of things that could fascinate but hold no substance at all, vanish at the touch. The air in his lungs, the wall he kept staring at. Himself. The words flowing through his brain. Nothing. Just a casual connection, weak strings giving intolerable heaviness to sounds and letters. In the end, the more he repeated something, the more he realized emptiness. Sounds rolling in his mouth numbing his palate, as he took another mask, another voice, another self - an evocation of something he forgot along the way, and in which he forgot part of himself.  
Bored, bored, bored. Bored.  
His thin lips part slightly, tongue darting gently over scabs of a tormented nature, sign of a certain carelessness betraying a polished image in all its destructiveness. “Bored,” Jim repeats, again. Just a murmur. Gentle, quiet, making sure not to disturb the non-existent life in a bubble of static silence. It makes him think of grey, grey dullness, something like quicksand but gripping at his brain and his heart and paralyzing him until he cannot breathe and exploding into a million pieces sounds like the most tolerable image. Scattering himself like cosmic dust. He wonders if, in that case, he would give life to other stars or just decay. Once more.   
Sherlock would probably shoot a wall. The thought, for some reason, brings a quiet, educated chuckle up his throat. Maybe it’s the relief of knowing even the great detective would agree on how terrible that wallpaper in Baker Street is. Maybe it’s a desperate fascination at the way Sherlock lets his capricious, childish anger take over. The way he expects something to happen. It has to, right? And he would stomp his feet, and sulk, and Jim would comply.   
His smile is kindly bitter, as he turns silent again, the only spot of color in an aseptic room. A dissonance, with his black hair, and this body occupying a space he hardly realizes, laying on a white bed, facing white walls. Cleanliness is godliness?  
Sherlock. The thought is resilient, sticking to the walls of his brain with a sense of survivalism that is almost cruel in itself. A torment within the torment, the detective is absence and yet he never seems to leave Jim. It makes Jim sigh, letting out the heaviness of his very own soul in a breath, extending one hand over the mattress in a blind, lazy search concealing desperation. Once his phone is in his hands he types, quick. 

 

 5 8 75. 15 57 39?

BORe. PLaY? It should be ‘bored’ but whoever decided to name elements in nature has never bothered with one starting with the letter D. A coded message, a plea for help, for company. For a distraction. For anything, really, as long as he could get the detective actively engaged and running - that, after all, seemed to be the only option for their interactions to work. Sherlock would get bored and Jim would provide. Cosmic dust in his cases, small parts of himself he shed for the other to collect, break down and destroy. It has to be interesting. Special, different, unusual. Every single time. Because that Sherlock seeks. The adrenaline, the unknown. If Jim had the impression of the other being even slightly interested in him, it was only for what he could not see or read clearly.  
_Damn you Sherlock Holmes and your love of clever things_.  
That doesn’t stop him from pressing send.   
He doesn’t have to wait for long but that time has the essence of eternity. It takes every breath Jim exhales, every single time his eyelids bat out of boredom rather than need and it multiplies it. Five minutes. It feels like hours. “What are you doing, Sherl?” he murmurs, his fingers toying with his phone, letting it move from one hand to the other. Opening the message, closing the message. Forcing himself not to look again, victim of malicious superstition.  
_Maybe if you can resist five seconds more he will answer_.  
What is he doing? If he closes his eyes, he knows. Sherlock is a creature of action, ruthlessness and craving. Jim can imagine him frantically pacing up and down along that terrible pastiche of a living room, jumping on the sofa, checking at the window to see if anyone is watching - if he knows. Days of boredom, days of nothingness. He’s been hiding a packet of cigarettes under his bed, John pretends not to know.   
Coordinates! No - maybe the number of victims? A phone number.  
A code.  
He almost feels guilty, knowing the speed at which his thoughts must be racing at at the moment. The pain, the draining force of images and words violently flowing out of a brain. A monumental search for the one right answer. It is fascinating, how Sherlock lets himself be entirely possessed by his own thought process. It is a kind of high that transcends euphoria in its violent clashing. Divine inspiration against Jim’s divine annihilation, the constant impression of a black hole crushing and devouring him.   
His phone vibrates quietly in his hand when Sherlock decides to reply. It has been only five minutes and twelve seconds, and the detective hasn’t bothered with a signature. It makes Jim smile, even before he processes the context of the text. The very way Sherlock has to step into any of his threats (he’d call them inputs, really - teasing jabs, perhaps), make himself look big, flaunt a game of nothing but magic tricks. Clever, clever man. Arrogant, too.

 

I know what you’re up to.

“Jesus, Sherl,” he whispers, rolling his eyes. No, you don’t. Then again, what does Sherlock know?    
Sometimes frustration at failed attempts of understanding takes over, and Jim is bitter. Mean. He imagines attacking the version of Sherlock that lives inside his brain, the one he can interact with and suffer with and from. Cruel, cruel Sherlock. Flaunting his genius, rather than suffering it. Closed in his cage of rationality, the realm of light and logic. 

 

What, pray tell? x

Condescending, flirtatious, vague. Jim gives Sherlock what he wants, and in the execution plays with his role, with Sherlock’s supposedly lawful one accompanied by his pleas for all the corruption in the world to manifest itself in London in one great enigma to prove his prowess. He’s not mean when he provides, when the wheels of his brain spin furiously only to create complex architectures for Sherlock to destroy. It’s devotion. For a blind man who can’t even recognize the elements he should be most confident with. 

 

I will stop you.

Jim wishes he was true to his word, for once. That Sherlock could actually bring quiet to his brain, stop him from gnawing at every single molecule, leaving him always more desperate and empty. He just shakes his head in dry amusement. Of course - he types. Hesitates for a moment, and it is rather odd to look at his wrist and fingers shaking slightly but not to recognize the movement. When he looks again, there is an address leading to that white, empty house and a delivered text.   
Sherlock has the upper hand and the only thing Jim can feel is relief.  
He has his location, the potential to destroy him. Hand him in to the police. Leave him to his terrifying, horrendously boring brother. What Jim does is daring and strangely faithful. It’s the carelessness of someone who’d throw himself to the flames (not for adventure, not like Sherlock. because what’s the point of it all anyway?), the stubborn belief that Sherlock is something else. Something like him. That he needs him.  
It’s a rather consoling thought.   
He calculates fifteen minutes. The time it should take Sherlock to grab his coat, stop a cab, force him to run into the London traffic and reach him. It is rather amusing to retreat into his own mind and let the images come alive. With his eyes closed, Jim sees Sherlock tapping furiously his hand against his knee. He sulks as he watches London through the window of the cab with an intensity to his gaze that can only match his vanity and pride. He must have a gun, and the mistrust that comes with that weapon between them still pains Jim. How could he not see that, had he wanted this, he would already be dead? That is not the point.   
But Sherlock never seems to get it.  
The stairs leading to his flat creak slightly, and he knows Sherlock has just spent at least one minute trying to figure out the lock to his front door. For a criminal mastermind, he’s ridiculously careless. No security system, no surveillance. Just a simple red door with a simple bloody lock to which Sherlock must have given his most heartfelt glare, possibly offended by such atrocious simplicity. There’s a few more clicks and then the door opens, it clicks shut after a few seconds. Sherlock is walking through the corridor in his very own house and Jim does not know how to feel. There’s that sense of bitterness laying at the core, but also a giddiness and excitement that transcends the physical, taking over and paralyzing him. He stills, almost halting every function just to focus his entire attention on each step. The light brushing of his coat as he walks, the way his eyes would study everything. A slight quirk of his brows, perhaps confusion.   
The house is everything that could be said about Jim, and yet it says nothing. No dust, no ornaments. Light in the living room comes from tall windows filtered by thick, white curtains.  A television. A sofa, sleek lines. A laptop sitting there, Sherlock’s fingers trembling with the temptation to open it and figure out his password. But he must go on, he must stop Jim and his terrible plan.  
The clash of expectations against reality is so violent that Jim is almost overwhelmed by it. There’s a tragic irony that he cannot seem to let his mind wander away from, and it’s so intense that he hesitates between the feeling of being on the verge of tears or just laughing. Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock. The criminal plotting murder is not the sight the detective is offered, when he decides to push open the door to his bedroom. It’s almost violent to the eye to see something other than complete, aseptic white. A black stain on white fabric, Jim’s dark hair is not slicked back and he lays in the middle of his bed with his arms limp at his sides, silent. He has a blue t-shirt, blue checkered trousers. Jim Moriarty is contemplating nothingness in his pajamas and Sherlock Holmes does not know exactly what to do.   
So he coughs slightly, waits.  
“You could just drop the gun, you know. There is nothing here,” Jim murmurs. Perhaps Sherlock would beg to differ. There is indeed material stored in his laptop, mostly potential still floating inside of his head. But this is not why Sherlock is here. It’s the bitterness taking over him and Jim lets it flow freely, all the disappointment of years of patiently waiting to reach someone chasing cleverness, nothing more. He pouts, slightly raising his head to watch the detective roam in confusion through his room. It still makes his heart ache a little to acknowledge his presence, to know Sherlock is looking for clues, for a translating device to make sense of what this is. To make sense of him. Too simple, too evident. There must be a metaphor somewhere, an allegory, a secret reading. Something far more clever than an empty bedroom with a single pile of books. Oh, the books, the books. Sherlock raises his brows and Jim watches him as he walks around. Lost.   
“So-?” He can actually see the moment in which doubt seeps into the thick shell of Sherlock’s shrine to rationality. What if this is all there is? A man and his silence and a white house. It’s disappointing. It makes Jim smile. _Schadenfreude_.   
“Nothing,” he repeats, and there’s a slight hint of pride to his tone. You are here for nothing. Nothing.  
“Nothing,” Sherlock echoes, and the word seems to have a bad taste in his mouth for the way he frowns, his mouth a straight line. He stands still, stops in the middle of the room to watch Jim nodding quietly and raising his arms for a second, before admiring them as they fall on the bed again with a muffled sound. Defeated. Before he can open his mouth once more, Jim is sitting straight, looking at him with sunken eyes and the air of someone who dreads the very thought of sleep.  
“B - O - Re. Twelve, five, eight. Atomic numbers, Sherlock. I’m bored. Bored,” he says, staring straight into him with an accusation he cannot bring himself to pronounce but hangs midair. Frustrated, disappointed. It stings Sherlock in a way he does not expect it to affect him. It strikes his pride, but it’s more than annoyance. The man is vain, it is widely known, but this is the sense of helplessness following a letdown. He looks away, giving Jim the shoulders.   
“Boron, Oxygen, Rhenium. Phosphor, Lanthan, Yttrium,” Jim can hear him muttering under his breath as he walks, closing the distance between his ridiculous figure wrapped in that dramatic coat and Jim’s current food for thought. He doesn’t say anything, but he imagines regret and anger in his tone. Sherlock is confused, taken aback by his own overlooking of details, by Jim. He’s not the ever-playful, ever-theatric figure performing before his eyes but a real and painful cut bleeding through this whiteness, and he’s calling for distractions. For him.   
It’s rather endearing. How desperately he’s clinging to details to find a way to pick his brain. His fingers stop on the first book on the pile of carefully stocked volumes, and Sherlock can feel Jim’s eyes digging into him with a rather amused, ferocious desperation. Greek tragedy. He looks back at him with a sneer, the book now tormented by long fingers skimming through pages of verses and notes in pencil. It’s the same cold air of superiority he has seen Mycroft sporting, a defense mechanism to the irrationality of this scenario that makes Jim cringe. “I suppose it would be comforting to blame the gods for your torment,” Sherlock says, walking.   
“Hubris. Pride always comes before a fall, Sherl,” Jim murmurs. Incapable of controlling or unaware of the softness in his tone as his tongue wraps around the detective’s name, shortening it into a pleasantly rolling sound.  
“Sherlock.”   
Prompt correction, Jim shrugs. Indifferent, terrifyingly close to touching his own apathy. “Whatever.” It is all meaningless, after all. “I’m not planning anything. For the next few months, maybe,” he lies. Or maybe he doesn’t. He’s not quite sure how but the sounds leaving his mouth are forming a sentence and that sentence is breaking the silence, floating in his room, filling the space between himself and Sherlock with expectation. Disappointment. Waves of ennui crush him and Jim falls silent again, dropping heavily on the mattress.   
“You’re bluffing,” Sherlock snarls back. What follows is a clever explanation of a clever plan, involving Jim’s first distracting move (which clearly Sherlock must have already detected, clever man!), and then a series of plots involving numbers which only casually seem to form words. The more he listens to it, the more Jim has the impression Sherlock is talking himself out of the horrible, terrifying sight of boredom. Impending, finally. If weeks of quiet have brought him on the verge of a breakdown, the perspective of months filled only by pale imitations of what he could possibly achieve with one of Moriarty’s plan must be a dreadful one.  
“I don’t work for you, Sherlock,” Jim replies, and it makes Sherlock halt. Motionless, his hands are crushing Euripides with a grip that is unnecessarily tight and of which he does not seem to be aware. Ridiculous. He does not find in himself the courage to hit back with the most sarcastic, pathetic question. _Why would you work for me?_  
Need. This mutual illusion of balance to placate the cravings of ferocious beasts in the forms of brains, quietly tucked into their skulls.   
He knows.  
And, in the back of his mind, Sherlock must know too.   
“I’m bored,” Sherlock sighs. It’s a form of surrender, lifting the thick walls of his brain, giving up a little of his control for the first moment of explicit honesty between them. He gives up his impression of power, the physical imposition of his own height and dominance in a room with no spectators where performance isn’t needed. At first he sits down next to Jim, his shoulders stiff, his coat and scarf holding his body in an awkward stance of pride that does not match the confusion in his face. It verges on impossible once he manages to lay down, pressing his shoulders against the mattress as if he has absolutely no clue of what to do with his body anymore.  
A quiet thud breaks the silence, Euripides falling to the floor. Imprecise, for a man of method. It makes Jim wonder, for a moment. Despite how desperately he wants to believe, it wouldn’t be difficult for Sherlock to fake. To hide his intentions, patronizing this ridiculous man and his reveries for the sake of obtaining another quick fix, another case. Maybe he just knows condescendence is the key to his heart. Or maybe he does think more highly of him than that.  
It is a sudden, unusual thought, verging on speculation or fantasy. They have never really touched, and the molecules of air separating them have assumed in time almost a mystical form. After all, neither can really assume the other is real. They could be figments of each other’s imagination, the spawn of desperation, loneliness, and craving.  
“Do you know we never really touch anything?” Jim asks, and he’s smiling, soft. Resigned. Stoic. Desperate. Mocking, for Sherlock. He imagines (wishes, fantasizes, prays for) the detective wondering whether he has made him up inside his mind or not. The selfish creation of a selfless antagonist for a selfish man. Quite the safe image. Someone ready to delicately unwrap words and numbers and plans out of his brain and leave him the time to consume them all. He has threatened to kill him, and then he has invited him in his personal retreat with no trace of protection, no security. Why would such a man exist?  
Sherlock closes his eyes, breathes out slow. “Yes,” he replies.   
The impression of touch is nothing but the transmission of an electric impulse from the rest of the body to the brain, a deformation of the skin through electrostatic repulsion coded out of convenience by the nervous system in texture, consistence.  
“Electrons-”  
“Repel each other at 10⁻⁸ meters, yes,” he announces. As if talking to an audience, with his blue eyes fixed to the ceiling and his expression proud, cold. It makes Jim want to scream and laugh a roaring laugh or cry.  
“Isn’t that terrible, Sherl?” He turns his head slightly, looking up at Sherlock again.  
Yes, it is. Even the temptation of closeness becomes vain when the universe and its laws pray for your loneliness. It’s terrible, but Sherlock does not say a word. He keeps silent and thoughtful for minutes that make Jim hold his breath, until there are long fingers pressing gently against his own, moving quietly to graze his wrist. He bites his lower lip to repress a sob he had held trapped in his ribcage for years. The weight of his patient wait crushes him and Jim lays still, closes his eyes. He could swear Sherlock is studying him with every second spent touching his hand, and he lets him, desperate. He would let him cut him open, serve his skull on a silver plate if he knew this would bring any kind of relief to both of them.   
“Sherlock,” the detective repeats again, but the quiet in his tone suggests habit rather than genuine annoyance. He really doesn’t mind, and his head is mostly occupied with breaking down and storing every single bit of information regarding Jim. His pulse slightly speeding up. Soft hands, fingertips only slightly calloused from nights spent typing furiously. Minor cut on his index finger. Cooking knife? “It’s science,” he considers, when his fingers push slightly through Jim’s, tangling together.  
“Anything is real, if you wish hard enough.”  
“So are you?”   
The question escapes Sherlock’s lips in a moment of weakness or of utter sincerity, but he doesn’t do anything to stop it from reaching Jim. There’s a faint smile on Jim’s lips, and it’s flattery, irony. A bittersweet sense of fulfillment. Tentative, he lets his thumb graze over the back of Sherlock’s hand. Even then he doesn’t pull away, and quiet settles in his own brain as he closes his eyes again.  
“So am I.”

 


End file.
